Humble Pie - Joint Effort (2019)

One of the first and most loved of the super groups from Britain, Humble Pie established their sound from the off. Former Small Faces leader Steve Marriott, fellow guitarist and vocalist Peter Frampton (ex-Herd), Spooky Tooth bassist Greg Ridley and the mighty teenage drummer Jerry Shirley convened at Steve’s Essex home in 1969 while the Small faces were still operating, but since his heart was no longer in the repetition of his extraordinary pop hits and hadn’t a desire to turn it up, rock a new metal brew.

Humble Pie - Town and Country (1969)

Humble Pie - Town and Country (1969)

Anyone who thinks of Humble Pie solely in terms of their latter-day boogie rock will be greatly surprised with this, the band's second release, for it is almost entirely acoustic. There is a gently rocking cover of Buddy Holly's "Heartbeat," and a couple of electrified Steve Marriott numbers, but the overall feel is definitely more of the country than the town or city. "The Sad Bag of Shaky Jake" is a typical Marriott country ditty, similar to those he would include almost as a token on each of the subsequent studio albums, and "Every Mother's Son" is structured as a folk tale. On "The Light of Love," Marriott even plays sitar. Peter Frampton's contributions here foreshadow the acoustic-based music he would make as a solo artist a few years later. As a whole, this is a crisp, cleanly recorded, attractive-sounding album, totally atypical of the Humble Pie catalog, but well worth a listen.

Humble Pie - Joint Effort (2019)